La Madonna, Our Lady
by Spunky Panda
Summary: A sequel of sorts to Idiosyncrasy. Six years after the Coming, Max finds peace.


Six years after the Coming, after the war, after she finally picked up a gun and put a bullet through White's brain, Max walks down the street.  Despite having saved all of humanity from breeding cult freaks, the government ordered the eradication of transgenics.  A few in Terminal City wanted to continue the war, changing only the enemy.  Soldiers from birth, they could not give up lightly.

But the transgenics did not have numbers on their side, and Max had a weakness for ordinaries, and most of the X5s had barely kept themselves there for so long.  So they ran.  Max remembered last time, and the ten painful years of solitude that followed it, and so she ordered them to stay together.

The transgenics ended up in Rome.  The Italian government allowed Max to plead their case, and found itself inexplicably sympathetic to their cause.  The saving humanity part helped, a bit.

Despite being willfully ignorant toward it all her life, Max found that her genetic coding allowed her to pick up the language instantaneously.  She adapted quickly, and found a job as an investigative reporter.  She finds the free press refreshing.

Her family is with her here.  

Jondy has always been her favorite sibling, and continues to share her life with Max.  Brin still stands too straight and talks too flat.  Zack's not all there, and is prone to random violence.  Zane lets nothing faze him, and has dreads from here to there.  Mindra watches everything, and says nothing.  Sinclair is the perfect amount of protective.  Rage hates everyone and likes hit people.  Krit looks so much like her it's scary.  Syl hates crows and still thinks everything is Lydecker's fault.  Jace loves her son so much it hurts.  Alec, her roommate, always turns the TV too loud and makes fun of her quirks.  Lark's sixteen now and no longer needs Alec to look out for her, but lets him anyway.

Her friends are here, too.  

Original Cindy is a few towns over, making it big as a defense attorney.  Logan's in a penthouse better than the last, but Italy is not as broken as Seattle, and he has nothing to fix.  Joshua lives in a sunroom outside of Original Cindy's place, unwilling to hide in the basement any longer.  Jeremy's married to Jondy, and spends his time learning about foreign cars.  Mole smokes cigars and talks gruffly, while pretending to ignore his two-year-old daughter.  Lydecker stops by every once in a while, commenting cryptically on exposure, and mistakes, and how Max is tied to them.

But some are not there.  

Tinga and Ben, who's deaths Max witnessed/participated in.  Sketchy, who fell ill in Terminal City.  Eva, who Lydecker killed so long ago.  Gem, who White strangled to death.  Jack, who was taken away and cut apart.  Brain, who took a bullet for Max.  Blade, who never made it to the perimeter fence.  Biggs, who was killed by an angry mob.  Little Ray, who the Familiars killed for his betrayal.  Lindy, West, Pront, Ember, and Figaro, who were cut down by machine gun fire in an ambush.

Max walks along the street. During the war, there was no time for peace, for quiet, for solitude.  It was fast paced and frantic and wore at her sanity.  It left no time for simple pleasure.  Just plans, and actions, and coffee, and death.  Just the blood of a people—disorganized and disjointed and disassociated as they may be—flooding the room around them as they fought against the Familiars.  So Max takes time now to enjoy the everyday.

As she walks down the street, she sees an artist with a cart full of paintings.

_"Buon giorno.__  Vuole comprare un dipinto?"_

She nods briefly at him, before shuffling through a myriad of canvasses, looking for something more that a landscape, or a simple portrait.  She thinks she wants something to put in her room, in front of her bed.  Something she can look at every night without getting bored.  A painting that means something.

And then she finds it.  "The Blue Lady," she whispers.

In her hands she holds something perfect, something that will fit into her life so completely that she'll forget it wasn't always there.  It's a picture of a naked woman, and she's dying.  Her body gives the impression of pain, and struggle, and weakness.  The arms hang a little behind her, limp and taut and convulsing.  Her legs have fallen under her, and yet they still ripple with muscles in heavy use.  But her face, it's got pain, yes, but it also has peace.  Her eyes are serene and all knowing and have a reflection of fire in them.

It's not the Blue Lady that Ben envisioned, that they all dreamed of and prayed to and hoped for.  She's not blue, for one thing.  You can't see her heart, except you can, kind of.  She's not a deity, immune to mortal troubles.  But Max knows that it's her.

Logan tells her she wasted her money on something that's not old, or fancy, or made by the right person.

Alec doesn't get it, and thinks it's a bit morbid, but hey, it's her room.  

Joshua thinks it's too restrained, that the artist was trying to hard, but he likes it because Max does.  

Mindra looks at it for a very long time, and her eyes are ever so sad, but she says nothing.  

Zack doesn't like it, partly because emotions create weakness and partly because it's not mechanical in any way.  

Jace won't allow Maxwell to see it, because she always tries to protect him.

Sinclair asks if she's depressed, but to himself he thinks it represents Max during her reprogramming—with Manticore taking her mind, but unable to strip away her soul.

Mole tries to burn a cigar hole through it, but Max stops him with a look and a sharp tone.

Brin waits for Max to order her to like it, but she doesn't, and Brin leaves undecided.

Lydecker admonishes her for forgetting the objective, though she can't think what her objective is right now.

Syl says that Lydecker is stupid, and likes that it doesn't have any crows in it.

Jeremy knows it's Jondy, with all the struggles and power inside her that she's only recently revealed to him.

Original Cindy thinks it's breathtaking and sorrowful and is a part of Max she never gets to see, and also that the girl has a wicked fine body.

Rage thinks the girl deserves it, and punches Max for taking up her time.

Lark thinks it's awesome, but her boyfriend is waiting outside and she has to go.

Jondy is the only one that gets it.  "It's the Blue Lady," she says.  "It represents family, and hope, and Ben, and protection, and that life we had back then.  The High Place, and the Nomlies.  It represents everything that we are.  It represents our pain, and our will.  It represents strength."


End file.
